Book Review: Lady of the Forest by Jennifer Roberson

Lady of the Forest

By: Jennifer Roberson

Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp

Publication Date:May 28, 2013

Format: paperback

Source: publisher

Robin of Locksley comes home after being away on the Crusades with King Richard and attempts to go back to normal life. His childhood friend, Marian of Ravenskeep, attends his coming home party in hopes of news on how her father died. Marian only has to look into his eyes to know that Robin is deeply troubled from his time as a prisoner of war. Robin must battle his personal demons before he can but he knows that he has his own demons to fight before he can fight for her.

Lady of the Forest is based on how the Robin Hood and Maid Marian legend began. Roberson fleshes out all the characters from the traditional telling of Robin and his Merry Men and gives each one a storyline of their own. Robin starts out a broken man but with the help of Marian he finds he doesn’t have to follow in his father’s footsteps and takes his future into his own hands. Marian starts out as weak but grows into a woman who can stand on her own. The Sheriff is depicted even more villainous and twisted which added a skin crawling creepiness to this dark tale of honor, greed and betrayal.

I had very mixed feelings while reading this. I was cringing at times at the crudeness. This is not a fairy tale by any means. I liked the meat of the story but there seemed to be a lot of padding put in making this a lengthy novel (589 pages). In the beginning I was not a fan of Marian because of how pathetic she was acting but I grew to love her. Other characters I just loved to hate. If you are looking for a story about Robin’s adventures, this is not for you. This is how he became that man.

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DISCLOSURE: I received this paperback from the publisher at no charge and in no way did it influence my review.